Last year, Russian American investor Konstantin A. Sokolov donated an undisclosed sum to President Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project. He also gave $12 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC and hundreds of thousands to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate campaigns of Susan Collins and Pete Ricketts. Since all those donations, he’s only been rewarded.
Reporting from Talking Points Memo finds that a company that Sokolov manages, called Dynamic Frontier Holdings LLC, was rapidly awarded a license that allowed them to purchase a copper mine in Armenia owned by by VTB Bank, which is sanctioned by the federal government due to its role in supporting the Russian financial system. Sokolov’s company was able to bypass the sanctions in October last year and receive a license from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Controls in just 10 days, a remarkably quick turnaround.
Then, in July, Sokolov was also handpicked by the State Department to lead a $201 million Trans-Caspian enterprise fund looking to invest public funds into the south Caucus.
“He hardly would be my first choice,” former State Department sanctions coordinator Daniel Fried told TPM, highlighting how his business interests in the region could interfere with the fund. “You have to ask yourself whether his involvement in [the Trans-Caspian Enterprise Fund] is going to lead to conflicts of interests.”
Sokolov, who is originally from St. Petersburg, has also met with 1789 Capital, the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.
This report comes just days after another major corruption scandal, where U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle attempted to convince a Republican donor to pay off her American Express card in exchange for access to the Trump administration. On Tuesday, she resigned at the president’s request—but that’s clearly not the end of pay-to-play schemes in this administration.